What is "Original Sin"?

F. Earle Fox

A great amount of
my growth out of the negative judgmentalism and anti-self theology of much of
practicing Christianity came decades ago when the Lord told me that anything
which might be considered wrong, evil, criminal, etc., on the human
level ought NOT to be attributed to Him on the divine level.
Eldredge makes the same point in different words.

Christians had imbibed too much of
the Hellenic mindset about the division between the material and the spiritual
(see article on Nancy Pearcey).
The Biblical view is that they are wedded, and that the division between them is
wholly due to the Fall from a relation of trust and obedience to God, a relation
of ontological and moral security.

That word from God makes
good common sense, even though many Christians do indeed defend such
behaviors because, it is said, God is "above" our powers of reason. But
if God wants to have a free-will covenant with His people (which necessarily
requires reasonableness on both sides of the covenant), He cannot relate to us
in that manner.

No doubt we will
never understand all there is to know about God, but He understands the law of
non-contradiction, and is bound by it (that is not a comment which demeans God -
because reason is part of the image and nature of God). God understands
that a freewill covenant relationship logically requires both sides to be open, honest,
and reasonable with each other. Anything less than that will produce
puppet-like creatures, who are incapable of honoring God. Honoring, like
love, requires a freewill response.

In contrast, for example, to the Muslim view of God, the God of the Bible holds
Himself accountable to both reason and justice (see Genesis 18:25). God
has the ability to do as He wishes, because there is no one who can
hold Him accountable. But He has unilaterally committed Himself to such
grace and mercy that we can depend on our rational human sense of justice to
help discern the nature and will of God. That is the very meaning of our
"living by grace".

One of the
major culprits of this sort of Christian judgmentalism has been a misguided
version of "original sin", which (1) imputed guilt to all persons for the
misbehavior of Adam and Eve, and (2) imputed guilt to our being as well
as our doing.

Both are wrong and have been very destructive in
the life of Christians. The principle that "I am innocent until
proven guilty" is a Biblical principle. I am not a-priori guilty
of anything at all.

(1) If sin means the willful (and therefore conscious)
disobedience to the law of God (the Biblical definition of 'sin'), then I cannot
be held guilty for any act committed even before I was born. Not even the
Fall. God told the Hebrews to drop any such notion

In both Jeremiah 29:31-1, and Ezekiel 18:2, we read that
the proverb is to be rejected which says, "The fathers have eaten a sour
grape and the children's teeth are set on edge." The father may
sin (eat a sour grape), but the son is not guilty (his teeth are not set on
edge). The son does not inherit the guilt of the father, so the punishing
of a whole clan or family for the sins of the father (as often done) was being
ruled out of Hebrew behavior.

These passages signal the shift toward a deeper
understanding of our individuality in the midst of communal relationships.

Each man thus stands trial for his own sins, not those of
his predecessors. That rules out an inheritance of original sin. We
do not stand trial for the sins of Adam and Eve, or any other predecessors.

(2) Sin is a potential quality of behavior, attitude, or
motive, but not of my being.

Some Christian mystics have said things like, "My own
existence is a sin..." That is a slander on God since He, being
our Creator, is responsible for our existence.

That, again, does not mean that our being is undamaged.
We are often severely damaged by events in our lives, or perhaps even more
importantly, by how we react to those events. We can react with rage,
resentment, retaliation, etc., or we can react with grace, love, patience,
constructive response, including firmness and clear decision-making. Which
way we choose will have deep and lasting effects on our physical as well as
emotional well-being.

So my being can be twisted and broken, but it cannot,
insofar as given by God, be sinful. My basic being is God's doing, and God
does only good. But because we are co-creators with God of our being and
identity, building on that primal level given by God alone, we can build a
"self", an "I", which is warped, what Christians call the "old self". That
old self is contrary to God's plan for us, and so that old self is what must be
crucified and die -- so that the self of original goodness can live.

The deepest level of my being is always good, so that it
is true to say that "It is always a good idea to be myself." That Original
Goodness is what makes redemption possible. If I were made totally evil by
the Fall, there would be no ember left to fan back into life. I would have
lost my free will to respond to the love of God. So my Original Goodness
can be destroyed only by my persistent unto death rejection of the will and
purpose of God for my life.

C. S. Lewis describes such situations in The Great
Divorce.

Satan is the father of lies, and the promoter of guilt of
our being. That is why he is called the "accuser of the brethren".
Any accusation directed at my being is likely coming from, or being promoted by,
Satan, and can be rejected out of hand.

None of this excuses us from repenting of our sins, that
is, our sinful doings. Focus on sinful being is a ploy of Satan's because
it distracts us from the real target, our sinful doings, and thus make real
repentance impossible.

Furthermore, none of this rules out our inheriting the
effects of the original sin by Adam and Eve, or our parents. We
obviously do. We are born into a sinful, rebellious, ignorant, and broken
world, much of it believing that it knows what it is doing. It does not,
and thus inherits the effects of that brokenness instigated by Adam and Eve,
and promotes the same into the future. A sinful, rebellious, ignorant, and
broken world breeds people after its own kind.

There is only one way (see
"Uniqueness of Christ"
in newsletter, and also #2 ) to stop that
cycle of death and decay -- to come back to our relation of trust and obedience
right down to the deepest possible levels of our lives -- for which we must
follow Jesus on the Way of the Cross. There is no other way back to the
Father.